


Drift

by Lucy OGara (judo_lin)



Category: The Adventures of Sinbad (Canada TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Dark, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Purple Prose, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:22:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26471821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/judo_lin/pseuds/Lucy%20OGara
Summary: The children are what break him. But people break in different ways.
Relationships: Maeve/Sinbad (Adventures of Sinbad)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Did you say PTSD, season 2? *cracks knuckles* Hold my beer.

Pairing: Maeve/Sinbad  
Rating: M (adult themes)  
Setting: After Season 1, assuming Season 2 never happened  
All standard disclaimers apply

* * *

The children are what break him.

He didn't expect it. Wasn't prepared.

He's seen darkness. Seen what he thought was the worst man could do to man. So when Omar of Basra called on him to help mop up the last of a force of invaders of one of his settlements, he agreed. Friends help friends, and Omar is a longstanding ally and benefactor. But the invaders of Omar's island outpost were vicious. Predators masquerading as men.

Sifting through the wreckage of what used to be a small city wouldn't be so bad if they didn't keep finding people. Whole people. Pieces of people. In various states of decay. Things he doesn't recognize by sight but by touch, the soft squelch of flesh left far too long under a thankless sun. The sweet-sick reek of death, melting-sweet, dripping-sweet, heavy as sap, coating him, coating everything he touches. In his mouth. Flies like a blanket and under even that the rats, fighting over things that used to be people, fighting even as skin swells and bursts, pouring forth gasses that can fell a living man, and the ever-growing spill of maggots.

The day the children begin to surface in the harbor, bloated and waterlogged, missing whichever limb was weighted down when they were pitched into the sea, he can't stop staring. One surfaces, then another. By the time he understands this was no mistake, no accidental drowning, he can't look away. Some float face-up, others face-down. They bob like little dolls around his ship, bumping the hull softly.

In the city death is red and black, blood and viscera, tearing and tearing and the aftermath, slippery-red, sticky-dark, pieces, not bodies, moving as if possessed until he nears and the rats flee. Here, in the sea, death is blue and green. Swollen. Sloughing skin, flowing features. Salt-stiff, but soft as water. Soft as the mercy of water. Infants. Bigger children, nearly grown. Boys and girls after days in the sea all look the same. Most eyes gone, a choice delicacy for sealife. Those that remain cloudy like marbles.

He hears nothing as the children drift. Not the wind. Not the dull, incessant rumble of the pyres. For a very long time, he watches. They move like baby spiders blown by the wind, like downy seedpods caught by the tide, trapped by the wrong element, sent somewhere they were never meant to go. But peaceful, too, like the seedpods, drifting without objection, all protest long silenced, long stolen by the sea. When they touch the hull of his ship, there's no fight in them. No grasping. No urgency. They touch; they drift. With the water. Easy as water. This is the first night he does not sleep.

The second night, he walks.

He's not pacing. He can't say he's pacing. At least, he doesn't think so. Pacing implies impatience, which implies waiting. He's not waiting.

Is he?

He braces his arms on the railing of his ship and leans back, taking his body weight into his shoulders, his triceps. They ache, but the stretch feels good. His eyes lift, as so often, to search for stars. Smoke from the pyres shrouds them. He cannot smell the sea. Ash drifts on the wind. It crunches in his teeth, a constant dull burn in his throat no amount of cool water can calm.

He wanted to let the sea keep the children. Omar insisted otherwise. Said those colonists still alive deserved the right to see them. Shroud them. Say goodbye. So Sinbad went into a boat, silent Rongar at his side. Went into the sea with the children. He did not want to disturb them. The sea resents giving up what it has claimed. He himself will be taken by it someday, he assumes. It's the end all sailors hope for.

But Omar reigns here, in this city of blood. So he slipped into the water and lifted the heavy, waterlogged bodies one by one over the side, Rongar receiving with gentle hands what Sinbad plucked from the sea, a silent harvest. Limbs are loose, flesh stiff. Skin slips and peels, little flecks and longer strips, thicker than he would have thought. But in the sea there is no blood. Missing limbs, yes. Missing fragments—fingers, eyes, lips. No blood. It's a tiny mercy.

Now he is still as the night moves around him, motionless save the gentle rocking of his ship. Weary muscles stretch and tremble. Minutes trickle past. He's never loathed the night before. Night brings warm fires and food, quiet talk or roaring laughter. Smiling women. Music. Wine.

No more. But he doesn't wish for day, either. Digging through the wreckage of lives, searching for the pieces left behind. He promised Omar, and he intends to see this through. But he didn't know, when he answered the call, just what it would mean. Most of Omar's colony perished; most of his army followed suit. For Sinbad and his crew this means cleanup duty. Trees to fell. Pyres to build. Bodies to find. The surviving colonists cannot begin again until their dead have been properly mourned.

When stillness becomes too much to bear, he pushes off the railing and heads for the stairs. This is his infinite loop, the cycle that keeps him from the abyss. He needs to hear them breathing.

He eases down the creaky steps into the galley, so in tune with his ship that the boards only sigh softly at his passing. They know their captain. He, in turn, knows every inch of this vessel. Where the floorboards lie unevenly, inviting stubbed toes, and where they squeal and bleat like sheep. He can make this walk in pitch-darkness. Wounded, half-asleep, or blackout drunk. The Nomad welcomes her captain, enfolding him in richer darkness as he steps below.

Last time he slept he woke from a discordant dream with the blinding certainty that his brother was dead. He _knew_ it. His bones, his gut, his intuition, everything he uses to guide his actions knew it. His conviction was so strong, so deep, that he lay still for long minutes, numb with shock. The certainty soaked through him. He breathed it, the sick-sharp pang of loss, traversing the edge of unreality, psychic dissonance, his body caught somewhere between sleep and waking, drowning in a bewildered grief he couldn't understand but believed with his entire soul. When the paralysis of nightmare finally released his limbs he stumbled from his bunk, staggering through the night-dark hold, waking Doubar from much-needed sleep to prove he still lived.

He played the incident off. Barely. His crew watch him now. They don't know he watches them, too.

Or listens, actually. The innards of his ship are dark as Hades without a flame. He sees nothing; he only hears. He knows the sound of their breaths as they sleep. The high whine in Firouz's nose. The long draw of Rongar's deep lungs. Doubar's rumbling snores. From the hold where they sleep, up to search for nonexistent stars, then back down, he circles all night. When one position grows too distressing, he moves silently to the other. A steady meter through the night, iambs of duty, of love. Brother. Stars. Brother. It t staves off the abyss. He's still sane. And while he listens to his brother sleep, the children without limbs cease drifting before his eyes.

He eases open the door separating him from his sleeping crew. The air is close, thick with the smell of unwashed male bodies. Stale sweat layered upon stale sweat, oily hair, filthy clothing. Sour breath ripe with wine or beer. He welcomes it. Better wine than smoke. Better sweat than the sick-sweet, fermented stench of death under a baking sun. He takes a willing breath, then another.

Firouz's high, whining snore skids and rattles. He flops to his other side, setting his hammock aswing. His breaths lengthen. The whine returns, and he slides smoothly into deeper sleep.

Sinbad hovers near his brother. Doubar is a thundercloud of a sleeper, rumbling with sound, lashing out with occasional foot or fist, quick as lightning before subsiding. He's dumped himself to the floor many a time, waking from a dream.

Sinbad leans against the wall. He listens. Deep, snuffling inhalations, sighing exhalations. He shared a bed with Doubar for the first ten years of his life. He knows his brother intimately—his sounds, his smells, the way his body sags a mattress. He wonders if his nightmares are the same now as then. Sinbad's aren't.

Or are they? As a young boy he dreamed of the sea. Stormy and unforgiving, hard waves that stole his breath, his sight, his mother. A flash of lightning. Golden hair illuminated, just for a moment, below in the deep. Now children bob before his eyes. Missing limbs. Missing eyes. Missing brother. The salt-sweet kiss of the ocean.

He still believes the sea should have kept those children.

* * *

Day dawns, sky low, heavy with ash and smoke. No one is hungry. No one speaks. They have nothing to say. They drink copious amounts of well water and watered wine, but nothing soothes their throats. They ignore it. They work.

And at night, once more, Sinbad walks.

He's not pacing, he tells himself. Not waiting.

Still no stars. He heads below.

Three nights without sleep—or is it four? Five?—and his body aches for it, but he can't. He can't feel that certainty again, the absolute belief that his brother is dead. His body fights for rest as he leans against the wall. His head falls back on the rough planking, rolling to the side. He stretches his stiff neck and shoulders, then pushes away, refusing the alluring spectre of sleep. In his dreams, Firouz does not whine. Doubar does not snore. If he goes too long without these sounds, he'll drown. The silence will drag him under as surely as rocks dragged the children, tethered to their living, struggling bodies.

But if he lingers too long, he'll sleep. So he turns, easing the door shut as he forces his legs to leave them. Once more he heads for the deck, the nonexistent stars.

As always, when he crosses the galley, he tells himself he won't stop at her door. He won't even pause.

As always, he's lying.

As always, his legs bring him this far and no further. And as always, he holds his breath, straining to hear a sound, any sound. She's so silent. Putting his ear to her door gains him nothing. He knows she's there, asleep, two steps away. He _knows_ it. But he can't hear it. And it's driving him insane.

This is his ship, but he doesn't violate her space in it—no one does. He has no reasonable excuse to do so now. If she catches him, she'll raise hell.

So he goes. His hands fist at his sides and he forces himself away from her door. He can go from his brother to the deck, back to his brother. Listen to the calm slumber of his men. Try to find the stars. He can do all of these things, but he can't open her door. She's alive, he knows she is. Dawn will prove it.

Something in him refuses to calm.

Smoke stings his throat. He emerges on deck, eyes dry and gritty, smoke and ash and lack of sleep. He stares up. The smoky sky has a hellish orange hue. No stars. No guides.

Was he wrong to make his people do this?

His conscience bites painfully, snapping at his heels like a baleful dog. He's the captain. If there's lasting damage, it's his fault. He seems to be the only one losing sleep, but people break in different ways. He could have refused Omar's call. Many did.

The smell of smoke and burn of ash swiftly become too strong, and his constant, nagging fears drive him below once more. He won't stop at her door. He can't hear her; there's no point. He won't stop.

He stops.

Fear builds. It eats him like acid, a burning, rising pain. He can't hear her sleeping breaths, can't prove to his body what his brain knows: she's alive. She's fine. He knows it, but he doesn't believe it.

His hand is on the latch. He's going to lift it. It's a terrible idea. A catastrophic idea. She'll skin him alive.

A muffled cough sounds behind the door.

He freezes, rushing back to himself, the sea to an exposed tidal pool, water to watery creatures defenseless without it. He feels as if he's been asleep. Can a man sleepwalk without sleep?

The cough continues—not a soft, singular stutter of sleeping breath, but throaty and deep. She gasps a quick, protesting breath before another round bears down. Reason flees. He lifts the latch and opens the door.

The smell of Dim-Dim smacks him in the face. His knees give. He drops.

A shudder blows through him as if he's thin and pliable as a sail. Dried herbs. Beeswax. Old paper. Ink and magic. Of course her cabin smells like her master; they share a trade. But he didn't know. Hasn't been inside this cabin since their mentor vanished and it became hers. He inhales the only parent he's ever known, lost to him for over a year now.

His cheeks are wet. Is he crying? How did he not know he was crying?

Her coughs cease. Silence hovers, heavy and deep, deep as the smoke obscuring the stars. He's so close, the door no longer an impediment, but he still can't hear her breaths. Her cabin is tiny, a little sliver of space barely big enough for her bunk, her books. He inhales past the tight bands of memory, the rending knife of his mentor's loss. He listens for any sound. Her breaths. Her waking. If she wakes to an intruder she'll scream, reach for a blade.

But she doesn't. She sleeps.

He leans his back cautiously along the hard wooden box of her narrow bunk, holding his breath against the bittersweet scent of sorcery, listening for the soft susurration of sleeping breaths. He needs it. Violated her privacy for it. In this moment, straining for that faint reassurance, he believes he'd willingly die for it. But even here, resting near the foot of her bunk, so close to where he knows she must be, he can't hear her.

Once, then again, he inches toward the head of her bunk. Were she Doubar or literally anyone else, he'd touch. Reach a hand into the darkness, seeking the certainty of living flesh, warm skin. But this is Maeve. He dares much, but not that. He can't wake her, can't be discovered.

He finds the far wall with his shoulder, knows he's now level with the corner of the room, where her head rests. Still he hears nothing over the sea, his softly rocking ship.

But he can smell.

He leans his head against the frame of her bunk and closes his eyes to the darkness. Paper and magic, candles and ink. Dim-Dim. Under that, though, softer even than the sweet, powdery mildew that frosts the bindings of her books, is something else. Not Dim-Dim; not magic. At least, not the conjuring kind. He can't hear her sleeping breaths, but he can smell her.

They live closely intertwined on his ship, all of them, often literally on top of each other, as all sailors do. But Maeve doesn't share herself readily, doesn't invite physical intimacy, particularly from him. Doubar can wrap her in bear hugs. Sinbad can't. It rattles him, seated on the hard floor so close to where he knows she's sleeping, that he recognizes the scent of her instantly. It tugs at him, as painful in its own way as the memory of Dim-Dim.

She's not sweet or cloying, not drenched in artificial scents of flowers or spices. Like the rest of his people, she's unwashed and will remain so until this job is done. Unlike the others, she smells like a woman. Sweat, yes. Leather and horse, sawdust and ashes. Honest work, toil and mourning. But not just that.

He can't describe it. Can't identify it. But as he sits so close to where she sleeps, something shifts. The precipice underneath him retreats. The darkness quiets. The children drift, but he doesn't have to disturb them.

So he stays. He can't hear his brother, but every now and then when Maeve coughs, he can hear her. For hours he sits on her floor, bathing recklessly in the smell of her, of Dim-Dim, shutting out the ash, the smoke. He leans on the hard wooden frame of her bunk, never seeking to touch, never asking for more. He's dared enough. Taken enough. He does not have permission to be here.

Dawn comes. It hums in his blood, his bones, as his night-blind eyes begin to find shapes in the darkness. The curve of a bare shoulder. The spine of a book. Leaving this momentary sanctuary is torment, but he has no choice. She can't find him, and they have a job to do. A promise to keep.

* * *

Omar works alongside them. He is a riddle of a monarch, a ruler with absolute power and a penchant for cruelty, quick to fury and retribution, but capable of deep compassion for his subjects. A fighting warlord in his younger years, he rode with his armies into battle, never asking more of his men than he himself was willing to give. Even now he toils, as the remnants of his troops toil, as Sinbad and his crew and everyone else who answered the call toils. He's lost weight since this war began, but the fire of the Savage Sultan still burns bright.

Sinbad admires Omar, and doesn't. Were he in charge, he would take the remaining colonists back to Basra. Abandon this speck of land, this attempt at occupation. More invaders will come. It's inevitable. The cycle will continue: assault, destruction, grief, repopulation. In another year, or five, Omar or his heir will call for aid again.

Will he answer?

He's too tired to guess. He pauses, ax in hand, shoulders screaming, the constant strain of muscle, heave and swing, heave and swing, over and over, incessant lift and fall until he dulls the edge, switches to another. A half-grown cabin boy from another ship carries the blunt axes to the whetstone. That there are many more tools than men says everything about the situation.

A light touch to his shoulder sets him reeling. He can't remember the last time someone touched him on purpose. Dead people, yes. Salt-stiff or melting with rot, liquefying putrescence. Not living. Not by choice. He whirls, ax rising automatically, defensively, head swimming with nothing, far too much nothing.

She jumps back, dark eyes wide, eyeing the heavy tool, the cutting edge. She's never backed away from him before.

His beauty.

Except not his, he acknowledges as he breathes deeply, struggling for comprehension as the children must have struggled for air, their last desperate moments before the sea took their breath, bubbles of desperation drifting for a surface too distant to permit their release. He stares, adrift. Finds solid ground once more when she steps toward him. She blinks. He blinks, as unconscious as a heartbeat. Sweat stings, but in those dark eyes, tawny-sweet, he finds footing. The waves drift around him. The children bump his hull. He's steady. He knows who he is.

And who she is. His crewmember. His friend. Not his beauty. Not his woman.

Wordlessly, she extends a skin of water—an offering, as if coaxing a vicious dog with kitchen scraps. She blinks again. He blinks. Sweat in his eyes. It coats his face, his body.

"You're not—" He coughs, spits black phlegm. "You're not on water duty." That's a cabin boy's job. Why doesn't he have a cabin boy?

"He needs a break." Her voice is rough with ash. "So do you."

He doesn't need a break. He just wants to finish this job, wants Omar to release them. He wants to go home, wherever that is. Like river-spawned fish drawn inexorably back to fresh water, to land, after life in the sea, he feels a tug in his gut, deep and inexorable, fierce as a gale. But to what? His ship is his home, and his ship is here. The last place in the world he wants to be.

He takes the water.

Does she know where he spent the night? He studies her face. She's a mess. They're all a mess. Sweat and dirt, ash and blood. She's tired; they're all tired. She looks at him the same way she always has. He thinks she doesn't know. Hopes she doesn't know. Last night was a momentary aberration. It won't happen again. He won't let it happen again.

As all sensible creatures, horses are afraid of fire. She is the only one they let lead them near the long pyres, lines of burning flesh, hauling wagonloads of wood from the treeline to the flames. Even for her they balk, and she must encourage them step by step, urging, cajoling, down among the heavy iron-shod hooves, where Sinbad feared at first she might be trampled, but they don't harm her. No creature ever harms her. They toss their heads and roll their eyes, squeal those eerie sea-creature squeals, but they offer her neither teeth nor hooves. And, in the end, they go where she tells them to go, despite the swirling ash thick as snowfall, the heat of the flames. They blow and sweat and flatten their ears, but despite their raw animal terror, despite the pain, they obey her. Two collapsed yesterday, drowned on dry land by bloody lungs. Omar ordered them butchered. Maeve will not eat her charges.

"Sit," she says. She looks at the ax still clenched in his fist. Looks at him.

Does she know?

"No." He drops the ax. The dusty thud as the heavy head hits brittle grass is like a little death, like someone pulls the quick release on a slipknot and his insides fall to pieces. It's fine. She can't see his insides. He drinks, washing ash into his belly.

"Yes," she insists. "You're tired."

He's past tired. Past the giddiness that comes after tired. Now he's restless. Muddled. Nervous apprehension with no clear cause fills him. He feels like he does before a storm. But she doesn't know. How could she know? "I'll live."

She does not answer. She's tired, too. Whatever she might say curdles on her tongue, silence speaking the futility of wasted breath.

Ash falls on the water, confusing, then killing, the fish. They float, silver bellies, silver sides, where the children drifted in the harbor.

* * *

He tells himself he will not open her door. He will not violate her privacy again.

Before midnight, he does.

The smell of magic torments and soothes, provokes and calms. He sees nothing. Hears little. Ash drifts through the hatches above—she should have battened them for the night, sparing her throat, her lungs, but she dislikes the feeling of being penned so thoroughly. Sinbad understands. On good nights, clear, sweet sea air seeps through those holes in the decking, blue moonlight soft as water. He does his best sleeping then. But those nights don't come here. The smoke, the ash, the constant dull roar of the fires blocks them more effectively than the mightiest fortification. Even the memory of silver-blue light doesn't come as he struggles to remember the smell of the sea without waves of rotten, stinking fish, without smoke, without people and pieces of people drifting, constantly drifting, in and out on the tide.

He hides from it, choosing instead the agonizing sanctuary of magic. Dim-Dim. From earliest memory this is his grounding. Nightmares of stormy waves, wind and water, a hungry sea demanding appeasement. Waking to beeswax candles, gentle flickers of flame. Old paper and ink, the clean, sharp smell of magic. Soft incense, sweet herbs. The old man's dry, gentle hands touching his hair, resettling his blanket. Doubar's hot, sleeping bulk at his back.

Maeve shifts in her sleep. She coughs, rough and painful, deep in her chest. He hates that cough, but when he cannot hear her breathe and dare not touch her skin, it's the only link they share. It quiets the waves that threaten to steal his footing. Awakens new fears—fears of the horses drowned in their own blood. Are his men coughing like that, too? He listened to their sleeping breaths, watched the orange sky, tread his accustomed path across the night until he broke and returned to her side. Why can't he remember if they coughed?

He sits on the rough wooden floor, rests his head along the hard frame of her bunk. She breathes so silently when she's not coughing. He wishes she snored. She's so close. He knows she is. He can smell her, underneath the candles and ink. Living flesh, warm and female. But he can't see, can't touch. Can't hear anything save her deep, labored coughs, the whisper of skin against canvas when she moves in her sleep.

It's enough, he tells himself. More than he deserves. He should not be here.

His ship rocks under him, cradling his body. He's so tired. Children drift amid the rotting fish. One bumps the hull, rolls slowly over. A little girl with Leah's face. He tries to lift her free, treading water, struggling to grasp the body as slippery as a fish. Rongar waits in the boat, arms outstretched to receive her. But the sea will not relinquish what it has legitimately claimed.

Rongar looks at the shore, where Omar stands, impatient. The sultan says take, but the sea is the ultimate arbiter of this child's fate.

"It's okay, Sinbad."

Suddenly Maeve is with him, treading water, a beam of sunlight adrift on the sea. Beads of seawater drip from her eyelashes, turn to diamonds when she blinks, priceless stones that sink silently into the deep as the children sank, before their limbs detached and they resurfaced.

"It's okay." She holds something out to him, cupped in two dripping hands. "Fish can learn to fly."

Silver-finned, silver-winged, the thing wriggles from her gentle grasp. It skims the surface like a skipped pebble, shimmers of spray like the sheerest silk ever woven.

Maybe fish can learn to fly. But not children.

"How not?" She eases the child from the water, the little girl with Leah's face. The body would not come to him but it comes to her. She cradles it against her chest, buoyed by the sea. Green-blue death, sightless, milky eyes. She rocks the dead child as the sea rocked her, inexorably soothing. Leah is dead. This child is dead. But Maeve is alive. "Sleep, Sinbad. It's time to sleep now."

Wasn't he just sleeping?

No. He wasn't. He looks at Maeve. At Rongar. Their chests lift and settle; they're breathing. He hasn't slept in days. He can't.

Phantom hands touch his hair, sweetly gentle. Long fingers comb it back, easing out the snarls. Oh, that's so good. Soft-sweet. He's not asleep, but he's not adrift, either. Waxen candles, paper, magic. Hand in his hair. But he's not asleep, and Dim-Dim is gone.

Let it be. He's too tired to ask questions.

Morning breaks, orange-brown and weary. He opens his eyes. Not a phantom. Not a dream.

He wakes, sore cheek pressed to the hard wood of her bunk. Warm breath tickles his hair. He shifts, sensation rushing back to his body. She's there, blue-gray in the predawn murk, asleep, head nestled tight against his, soft breath in his hair. One hand rests warm on his shoulder, the collar of his filthy shirt.

Is this love? It hurts more than he can describe. He prays it won't ever stop.

* * *

The children do not readily burn. They smolder, resisting the flame. Layered with wood above and below, anointed with oil and incense, still they smoke and smell like seaweed.

This is wrong. Everything in him says so. Ashes to ashes, but the sea is forever. The sea will remember what they've stolen. Little bodies in their winding sheets, yards and yards of finely woven white linen, the best Omar would give. Cloth burns, flame pale and clean, but skin chars slowly, smokes, reluctant. It remembers the sea.

But this is Omar's place. Omar's people. He owns those children as surely as if he fathered them. Sinbad cannot interfere. He looks to his right, soft billowing of once-white sleeves like froth-topped waves. She stands silently, holding the lead of a towering warhorse, a creature meant for battle, not drudgery. Red horse, red hair. The beast lowers his head over her shoulder, a gesture of submission. Of kinship. Sinbad would do the same if he could. The tide tugs at him even now as he stands on dry ground, ripples stronger and stronger as he watches the children smolder, smells burning seaweed. Salt and flesh, charred hair. Maeve coughs. A flash of red wets her lip before she licks it away.

She blinks. He blinks. His heartbeat. She watches the fire, then turns away. Presses her forehead to the forehead of her horse. Her eyes clench tight as she seeks solace, as she so often does, in a living creature that is not human. The horse lowers its tired head, lets her wrap dirty, splintered arms around its face. She hugs the creature as it shoves its soft nose into her soft belly. Tears shine on her cheeks, salt-wet and real. Not diamonds.

Suddenly he's angry. At her tears. The beauty of salt water. Her refusal to hide them. She is a woman. She may weep openly without fault. No one chides her, scorns her. He stares into the burning wind. This is a freedom she has that he does not, and for a moment he hates her for it.

Doubar shoves roughly past him. Doubar can touch her. Sinbad cannot. His body aches when his brother jars him. Something inside does, too. The waves rise, gaining strength. "Maeve, girl…" Doubar's filthy hand on her shoulder. Maybe he hates his brother, too.

She flinches back, drawing away, startling the horse, which shies. "Leave me alone." Her hair lifts with the wind, mixes with the horse's mane, both bright as flame. "I'm fine."

She's not. No one is.

Omar is coming. He travels the barren ground, each step stirring ash like drifts of ancient dust. "You have magic." He points at her. "Fire. You can fix this. Make them burn."

The wet streaks on her cheeks glitter. Not diamonds. Sinbad wants to lick them, to taste the honest salt. He's never thought such a thing before. She's not his to touch. She wasn't even awake this morning when he left her cabin, pulling from her sleep-heavy hand. She touched him in a dream—hers, his, or a combination thereof. Flying fish and falling diamonds, a child given unto her for safekeeping. Did she actually touch him at all? Or did he dream that part, too?

"No." She wipes at her eyes with filthy sleeves, linen ripped and speckled red-brown with blood. Was she torn and bloody in the sea? He remembers diamonds. Not blood.

Omar's face sets. "No?"

"Mixing death and magic is never right, and I'm only a student. You don't want me to try." Soft hands stroke the nervous horse, hold the rein firm. His nostrils bleed into her palm.

"I do want it. I am not asking for necromancy. Nothing so powerful, nothing so dark. Dead they are, dead they shall stay. Just make the pyres burn."

"No." She kisses the horse's broad, flat cheek. Cracked lips, sleek pelt. She rests her cheek against his.

"Yes." Omar lifts his spine, flares his shoulders. He is not a big man, and past his prime, but he earned his reputation honestly, in blood.

"No." She will not bend. She acts upon emotion, her greatest beauty and her biggest fault. It may be her death if she pushes Omar too far, and Sinbad will not survive that loss. The tide tugs at him, rising higher, threatening his footing. "I won't risk what few living souls remain in this accursed place."

Omar's face is a thundercloud, a storm about to break. "Your captain likes that mouth. I don't. Be very careful, woman. I'll have it sewn shut."

"I'm not yours to command!" She coughs, wipes her lip, flecks of human and horse blood indistinguishable on her fingers.

She isn't. She's Dim-Dim's, and nominally Sinbad's. Should he intervene? She won't thank him for it.

"The longer you delay, the longer we all toil in this smoke! The longer that beast does." Omar points at the horse. "The human tragedy seems to elude you, but my horses bear the burden as much as the rest of us. Will you be the cause of more death?"

That isn't fair. Omar doesn't care about beasts of burden. Maeve does. "I hate you," she hisses, the sizzle of water poured over hot rocks.

"You're entitled. Many do. It makes no difference." He points. "Fan the flames. Make the pyres burn."

"No. Give the children back to the sea. Even I know that much."

She sent her pet hawk—her familiar, whatever he is—to safety elsewhere, for which Sinbad is very glad. Omar would be missing his face for threatening her otherwise. She turns to the horse as she has never turned to Sinbad, has never turned to any human so far as he knows, holding it tightly. Warhorses do not like this, but this one remains still. For her.

"She's just an apprentice." Sinbad steps toward the sultan. Toward her. His footing holds. The tide doesn't overwhelm his balance, doesn't take him. Not yet. A cough barks from his throat. "And she belongs to me. Let her be."

She belongs to Dim-Dim, not him. She's never belonged to him. But she's more his than she is Omar's.

Omar does not like this. "You wear a token of my esteem, captain."

"And I answered your call. Leave her be."

Tears shimmer. Not diamonds. Far more beautiful. She blinks. He blinks. Automatic, almost easy. His chin lowers fractionally: acknowledgment. Omar stalks away. Her blood-speckled hand strokes her horse's nose.

He has to get her out of here.

* * *

"Thank you, by the way. For backing me." Words land softly on his skin, smooth as wind against a sail.

The galley feels like the inside of a smith's forge. Stinking and still, heavy and dense. The deck is no better.

Doubar rests at the table, draped over it like a man past his limit at a tavern, though the watered-down wine ran out days ago. Rongar leans along a wall, Firouz already in his hammock in the crew's cabin. Sinbad knows where his people are. He always does these days. The solid ground beneath him is measured only by their breaths, their heartbeats. What he doesn't know will sink him.

"You know what you know. Omar doesn't." He sinks to the bench, watching her. Not close. Never too close. She doesn't know where he's spent the last two nights. At least, he thinks she doesn't. She hasn't killed him yet.

She rolls filthy, torn sleeves past her elbows, lank linen that used to gleam white like froth-topped waves. Milk-pale forearms appear, long and sleek, elegant as the legs of a doe. Flesh torn and scabbed, splinters punched through skin like needles through cloth. She's loaded and unloaded countless wagons of rough-split wood, built pyres tall. The cabin boys from the few other ships shelter under her care, preferring to fetch and carry at her command, not their captains'. She will not coddle them, but she spares them the worst. Every boy is in love with her—a sexual dream barely understood and a missing mother made manifest. Sinbad envies them their soft, moon-eyed stares.

"You should protect yourself better."

Tiny metal pincers gleam in her hand. She rests her non-dominant arm near a candle, pale underside studded with splinters and blood. She doesn't look at him. "I'll live."

His gut lurches, a dull rush of panic stealing his body. The visceral, harsh reaction to her reflexive retort stuns him. He hates it, her negligent rejection, the dark twin spectre hanging above her automatic words. Splinters will not kill her. But something could. A felled tree toppled wrong. A bolting horse. Omar. And he will not survive that loss.

She plucks slivers of wood from her flesh by candlelight, swift and methodical, Firouz's tool put to better use than tinkering. She does not flinch as blood wells. Sinbad does, bracing against the plunging of his belly, the abject, pointless fear when her blood runs red. She's fine. She doesn't even wince. But he loathes it.

"I'm sending you to resupply." The words leave his mouth before the thought is fully formed.

She looks at him in silence. He loves her eyes. Dark, yes, but not inky-flat. Deep as a forest, full of small rustles and birdsong. When she blinks, her lashes move like wings. Did she really tell him fish could fly?

"Since when do I do your marketing?"

"Since you made Omar angry."

She blinks. He blinks. Her fingers move, pincers tug. A tiny dagger of wood pulls free.

"Am I in trouble?"

"Have I ever disciplined you?" Could he? He doubts it. "It's not punishment. It's to prevent another row and the fallout thereof."

"You should be happy to go," Doubar grunts, closing weary eyes. "I would. In fact, I'll volunteer."

But Sinbad can't stomach this. The truth, no matter how much he flinches from it, is that he cannot allow both girl and brother so far away. He has before. Not now. The tide rises, swirling at his knees, threatening him with a silent, insidious undertow.

"I need you here. Rongar will go with her." This is almost as bad. The tide swirls, stinking eddies of froth and dead fish. But she can't helm this craft alone.

Rongar lifts a hand in assent. No one has the energy to ask questions.

"Let me." He shifts closer to her, as he knew he would, as is inevitable with her. He's no better than the moon-eyed cabin boys.

She hands him Firouz's little pincer tool without a fuss, rests her forearm between them, soft side up, an offering. She was swift at this task with her dominant hand but the other is clumsier.

The air is thick with scent and silence, ash and fatigue. She's so close. She does not, as a rule, invite his touch, but in this moment she doesn't resist it, either. His rough fingertip glides the upturned plane of her forearm, the tender underside hairless and soft as water. Hers is the first living flesh he's touched in...he doesn't know. Too long. Callused fingertips dull the feeling. Even so he exhales swiftly, specks of ash dancing in the wash of air. She shivers, a ripple of sensation visible when his breath touches her skin.

"Sorry."

"For what?"

For everything. For answering Omar's call. For invading her privacy, sitting by her bunk when he knows he shouldn't. For her tears earlier. The beauty he found in her pain. For hating her because she can cry.

The secret skin at the inside of her wrist, the shadow at the hollow of her elbow: these things are unspeakably beautiful. That her arm remains connected to the rest of her, not torn loose, rolling on the tide. A tendon flickers, visible for an instant under her skin as she tenses and eases the smooth muscle. She's as powerful as the warhorses she leads, and put to as unnatural a use here among the dead.

_Don't die._

He catches the plea on his tongue, swallows the prayer before it leaves his lungs. Dark-forest eyes watch him. She blinks. He blinks. Maybe she heard him anyway.

The big slivers are easy. They resist the pull of the pincers, resist his tug, as unwilling to part from her as everything else, but inevitably he's stronger. Blood wells, tiny drops and longer flows like spattered wine, scattered rubies as the candlelight winks and gleams. She breathes. He breathes. Near the wall Rongar snores.

"There's spare canvas in the hold." He can see tiny splinters still embedded in her skin, fine as hairs in candlelight, too small and too numerous for Firouz's tool. "Take as much as you need. Wrap your arms tight before you handle split wood again. I'd give you leather if I had it."

She lifts a shoulder, deflecting his concern as neatly as a general diverting an attack. "It doesn't matter."

But it does. In this moment the world exists only in her heartbeat, the pulse he can almost see in her wrist, her throat, the dim wash of moving candlelight on skin. Beyond her, Doubar's eyes fall shut.

He slips his fingers under her upturned arm, strokes his thumb lightly along her skin. Hot with life, ever so slightly sweat-damp in the close galley. He knows exactly how she would taste if he touched his tongue to the blue lines at her wrist, sweaty salt, female-sweet. But he won't. He knows better. He adores her, and he doesn't want to die today.

She allows his thumb, the movement soft along the sleek line of bone, the delicate knob of her wrist. So warm. So beautiful. How does she work? How do they all? Are they just intricate machines made of muscle and bone, as Firouz insists? Or is there something greater at play? Children—things that were once children—fell apart in his arms when he lifted them from the sea, fell to pieces, the machinery broken, the mechanism no longer functioning.

The flicker of light on the hollow of her collarbone distracts him, holds his attention like a flash of movement in the woods. He does not like how clearly he can see her lovely bones. She is not pieces. Not parts. He resists this violently despite the evidence of his eyes, despite knowing what he knows. If she went into the sea and did not resurface, she would come to pieces, too. Like the children. If Omar had her flayed for disobedience, her layers, her pieces, would be revealed, just as the people whose bodies now burn on pyres, whose ghosts wander what used to be streets. Skin and muscle, sinew and ligament, bone and deeper still, soft, quivering organs. She's no different than any other body.

Except she is. He resists cold facts, denies Firouz's voice in his head. She's different; she has to be. The way he feels when she smiles—he does not feel that way about pieces. Bodies once human, now fallen and rotting, or beasts slaughtered and gutted. She is not that. She is something else; there's no other explanation. The dissonance when his eyes find the shape of her beautiful skull under her skin makes him furious. He rejects the proof of sight.

The tide laps the hull. His ship rocks softly. She told him fish could fly, but no one here has wings. All he smells is death.

"This won't last forever, Sinbad."

His thumb strokes her skin. For this touch he'd almost be willing to let it. She's so warm. Smooth-soft. Alive.

"Do you trust me?"

Forest-dark, forest-deep, her eyes watch him. When she turns to the light he sees veins of gold in the brown, sunlight filtered through a dense canopy. Birdsong. The flicker of feathered wings. Her arm does not flinch in his hand.

He releases her. Doing so is a tiny death. She stays where she is.

He draws his knife. A double-sided dagger, sharpened earlier today. Mirror-bright, the blade bounces candlelight back into her eyes. She does not move.

"I won't hurt you." He never could.

"I know."

Her soft breaths remain even. No tremble mars her gaze. He lays the flat of the blade against her upturned forearm, cold metal, warm flesh. Goosebumps prickle her arm. He tilts the honed edge ever so slightly down.

"Don't move."

She doesn't need the warning.

He glides the blade slowly along her skin. Tiny splinters gather and pull free, like tawny little hairs. He doesn't breathe. One pass. Two. Three long, smooth strokes. She doesn't flinch, even as he nears her blue veins.

He releases her, scrapes his knife against the edge of the table. Wordlessly, she extends her other arm.

He's never shaved another man, never put his blade so close to living skin he does not intend to harm. But she watches him calmly, fearless as the tide.

"Thank you." She watches him sheath his knife. Her fingers trace her skin, streaks of red where he disrupted half-congealed droplets, but he told the truth. He didn't hurt her. He never would.

"Sleep. I want you and Rongar out on the early tide."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said two chapters but there will be one more because of where I broke it. So three altogether.

She did not protest when he claimed her in front of Omar.

_She belongs to me. Let her be._

She doesn't belong to him. She never has. She belongs to her hawk more than she belongs to him. But she didn't argue. She held the head of Omar's warhorse in her arms and let Sinbad claim her, beast and human blood mingled on her skin.

His ship rocks softly, moored in the mess of a ruined harbor. Dead fish drift and rot, line each rolling wave with oozing, stinking filth. Bits of children wash ashore, pieces that used to be children, sometimes recognizable, more often not. Over it all ash settles like a shroud. He no longer seeks the stars. They abandoned this place, and him, long ago.

But Maeve hasn't. She's here. Until the early tide, he can keep her. He folds his aching body into her space, hoping she won't notice, praying she won't mind. He'll be an old quill discarded under her shelf, a crumb of incense forgotten behind the door. He tucks himself tight against the hard wooden side of her bunk. He won't disturb her. He won't make a sound, won't try to touch. He only wants to stay near. Like the sultan's horses. Like the cabin boys. He'll never mean to her what her hawk means, and that's okay. It's fine. He doesn't need to mean anything, so long as he's permitted to stay.

She coughs. He hates that sound, and yearns for it. She shifts in her sleep, the soft slide of skin on canvas, weary crackle of old straw. When this is over, if it's ever over, he'll get them all new stuffing for their beds. Fresh straw, newly dried, hot and sweet with sun. Enough wine to erase the memories, or at least to drown them when they grow too loud. He'd wrap her in silk if he could, as sheer and light as the clear pink of a new dawn. But she doesn't want it. She has a trunk full of rich fabrics, gifts from a grateful queen, and wears none of them.

Even here as he sits beside her bed the tide rushes close, pulls at him. A strange click, clicking sound enters his ears: shrimp prowling beneath the waterline? Or something else, something darker, more insidious, below in the deep?

He entered the water the day after Leah drowned, steadfast, choking back his fear. He shook as he plunged into the surf and sank like a stone. Again and again he stood, threw himself at the water, and sank to the bottom, until Doubar dragged him out, vomiting seawater, blinded by salt. Then back again as soon as his brother released him, insistent on this skill, determined to win this fight. His ignorance and fear killed Leah as surely as al Disar's shove. He refused to let it happen again. No one else would ever die on his watch.

Except many have. He's not a child anymore and he understands better now. A single man has little control over who lives, who dies. Only over his own hands, what he chooses to do with them.

That day he chose to fight. Not al Disar, who fled his home and could not be found, but the other entity he found at fault: the sea. Into the water he went, again and again, over and over, the same battle with the same result, a watery Sisyphus forever at war with an element. The surf pulled and pulled at his body like an old woman carding wool, tossing him between the combs, whipcord-strong, rolling and rough, harsh and unending. He could feel the eternal strength of this enemy, ceaseless and constant, yet still he fought. He struggled and sank, struggled and sank, head dizzy with the motion, the lack of air. He tried to stand; the undertow stole the sand from under him, stole his footing, then his legs. Stole his breath. He opened his eyes to a rush of bubbles, foaming froth as waves broke against rock. His head connected, a cracking blow as he was swept along with the merciless tide.

His body went limp. No Doubar to save him this time. No Dim-Dim. Just a little boy alone in the sea, the same sea that took his parents. His Leah. His world. It stole his breath. His footing. His foundation. Slowly he blinked, feathers of red drifting, drifting before his eyes. His own blood. Immaculate silence below the waves, water moving around him, always moving, but in softer eddies to the lee of the rocks, away from the greatest violence of the tide. Perfect silence. A long, sweet moment of sublimest peace, the toss of the water, feathers of red. He remembers surrender.

And in that surrender came—not wisdom, never that, but understanding. Comprehension. The slow movement of his limbs before his eyes, not against the tide but with it. Part of it. Part of the wave, the undertow. Belly full of salt, blood in his eyes, he moved not like a little boy but like a creature of the sea. Part of the sea, part of the peace. He struggled with a young brain starved of air to cling to this knowledge, hazy and indistinct as his own reflection in a puddle. The sea gave this knowledge but aimed to take him in return: a trade. Insight for his life, a bargain struck without his consent but also without malice. To claim, he realized too late, was the sea's nature. Men who sail strike this bargain willingly. They enter the sea and rack up a reckoning that will someday be called in, water swallowing, enveloping, claiming all with a last, engulfing kiss.

But not just then. Not for him. His body bobbed, buoyed by salt. His drifting foot caught a knob of rock. Earth pulled. Water pulled. He stretched between them, the element that made him and the element that lay claim. His hands opened in surrender, drifted before his face. A boy's open palms. Feathers of blood.

In his case, for whatever reason he still doesn't know, earth won. The sea relented. It could have pulled him to pieces, could have battered him to sludge against unyielding rocks, but it chose to let him go. For a while. He stood upright, neck-deep, chin-deep, streaming salt and blood. Another moment and his lungs would have surrendered as the rest of him surrendered, giving in to the silence, the undertow, the lure of the deep. But they didn't. That time. That first battle.

"Hush, Sinbad. They're sleeping."

She steps softly, barefoot in the golden sand. Yellow sun spills from an azure sky. No smoke. No ash. But at her feet lie scattered bones. Bleached white, gleaming white, they shine like finest ivory, clearest alabaster, nestled in agate-studded sand. Skulls and longbones, ribs and knuckles, individual vertebrae and graceful, curving pelvises, half-buried like treasure washed ashore after a storm. The tide licks lazily at her feet, testing, tasting.

No. No. If it tastes her, it will want her. He puts out a hand, reaches for her wrist to draw her close, away from the lapping tide. She dances just out of reach.

"They're not sleeping." Death is no sleep. He's seen for himself what it is. The screaming and the rending and the fight, red and slick and desperate until surrender. Capitulation. Then silence. But they don't sleep. He sees them drift, the children, endlessly drift, where he plucked them days ago from the sea. They're still there. They will always be there. They drift; he drifts. No one sleeps.

"You're sleeping now, Sinbad."

He is not. He won't ever sleep again. "Don't do that." He reaches once more as she steps further into the sea. It swirls around her graceful ankles, laps eagerly along her skin. He steps closer, afraid she'll disappear if he touches her, like a mirage in the desert. But the sea can't have her. He reaches for her despite his fear.

She's real. Or, at least, she doesn't disappear. He wraps light fingers around her wrist, the lovely, delicate bones. Skin hot with sun, rich as cream. He aches to put his mouth just there, just where his thumb rests against the inside of her perfect wrist. He pulls gently and she yields, exiting the waves. They can't taste her. If they do, the sea will want her. The boys want her. The horses. These are harmless, but the sea is not. It released him when he was a child, and that's a reckoning he'll have to face one day. But not today. Let the sea take the bones. It can't have her.

She looks at him, dark-forest eyes full of little rustles of living things. "It's okay, Sinbad. I can swim."

"I know you can." That doesn't make it okay. All sailors swim. The sea takes them anyway. That's the deal.

But not her. Not now. Not yet. He tugs her gently, one step further onto dry sand. Then another.

As he pulls, the white underside of her arm turns to the sun. It's covered in gore, blood running from gouges far worse than a few splinters. Did her hawk rip her open? He grabs for her wrists, holds her soft arms still, open to the golden sun, the salt-sea air.

"Sinbad, it's not your mess. Do you hear me?"

He hears her. He does. But he also hears the churn of the sea and now, just beginning, swiftly growing, the roar of the pyres. Smoke smudges the horizon.

No. No. He sees her arms torn open, red and gleaming, the inner parts exposed, not hidden away for safekeeping. He presses her forearms gently together in front of her, lowers his head over her wounds like a wild beast guarding his mate. If the sea tastes her blood, it will want her. It will try to take her from him.

"You're not listening."

Not his mess. Not his mess. But she is. His beautiful, perfect mess. The sea can't have her. Omar can't, either. He nudges her blue veins with his nose. Such a sweet color, the aching blue of the sky. She smells like a forest, cool and green, soft and alive. Rich, damp earth and wet wood. Those threads of blue like the finest lace. His tongue licks his chapped lip, touches her skin. Like a wild animal, a creature of forest or field, bereft of civilization, he licks. Long, slow strokes, a lion comforting his bloodied queen. Blood rich and mellow on his tongue, like metal, copper filings, iron weights. Her wounds disappear under his gentle tongue like sandy footprints erased by the tide.

"Sinbad." She pulls a hand free of his grip, strokes soft fingers through his wind-tossed hair. Her forehead presses to his, sun-kissed skin, warm breath feathering his cheek. "Things break. All the time, and in different ways. You can't fix them all."

Smoke on the horizon. It's growing closer. He breathes the clear air, releases her arm and draws her close, wrapping her tight in arms suddenly bone-weary. Blood on his tongue. Blood on the tide. It washes their feet, drawing closer, circling the bones with swirling eddies of red-flecked froth. Yes. Let the waves take the bones. But they can't have her. He's keeping her for as long as they get, as long as he's allowed.

She tugs away, pulling from his arms, and no matter how he tries to catch her, like a little songbird she's always too far ahead. She steps further into the sea. Bloody waves lick her graceful calves, the backs of her knees.

"No." He reaches for her again, but she's out of his hands.

"It's time to go."

No. He can hear the pyres growing louder, the roar and crackle of flames. No. "Who says?"

"You did."

No. He'll never order her away. He reaches for her arm, the lovely shapes of her bones. Slippery as a fish, a little bird, she evades him. "Stay," he pleads. He won't touch again if she doesn't want him to. He just needs her to stay.

"Sinbad."

Sinbad.

"Sinbad."

He jerks. He wasn't sleeping. He swears he wasn't.

Warm hands fumble in darkness. A knuckle brushes his forehead. He's on the floor next to her bunk, curled into the corner where he hoped he wouldn't disturb her.

She withdraws, then returns, hands surer. He tries to flinch away, to put up at least a token protest, but his body won't obey. He craves so much. Steady fingers wind through his hair, stroke his forehead, feather-light. In the darkness he could almost believe she had wings. Ash drifts silently through the hatches.

She coughs, rough and deep, the sound torn unwillingly from a throat gone raw. He remembers the flash of red on her lip, licked swiftly away. His tongue remembers the taste of blood, too.

"I heard you coughing." It's the worst excuse he's ever offered for anything. He digs hard, angry fingers in the corners of his eyes. How did he wake her? He doesn't remember sleeping.

"Everyone is coughing. Even you." She stifles another.

He wants her hands back in his hair. Wants to see her. He holds her scent like a lifeline in a storm, so very real and so very female. Sweat and blood, yes, but living woman. Life and magic, the secrets in her dark-forest eyes. His hands reach into the stuffy darkness, slow and inexorable as a lit fuse. It's not a good idea and he knows this, but in this moment he can't fight the need anymore. He's beyond control, beyond instinct, raw and desperate. Fingertips brush her woolen blanket, reject it. He presses further.

There. Warm skin. He bumps her forearm; she gives him her hand in the darkness without protest. He lowers his nose to her wrist, breathes her in. Skin hot with sleep, soft with life. She's smooth as silk under his thumb, save tiny scabs here and there where he pulled slivers of wood from her skin. No deep gouges. No bleeding wounds. Something in him releases, like too much tension on a taut line. The desperate panic eases. The tide calms.

She extracts her hand, withdraws back into the darkness. Like the sun eclipsed his world is black, but he can't blame her. He wouldn't blame her if she slit his throat, though she probably won't go that far. He should leave. Climb to his feet, head for the door. Use what's left of the night to craft an utterly abject apology.

Straw rustles as she moves, turns her back to him. Then that voice, rough with smoke and sleep, bone-weary but neither angry nor surprised. "Come to bed or go back to your own, but don't stay on the floor. Makes me think I hear rats."

He doesn't move. He doesn't dare. Does she mean it? She should be furious. She has every right. He should not be here. He breathes, balanced on the knife's edge, the excruciating pivot of indecision. He's so tired. But his bed holds no rest, the sky holds no stars. The world exists only here, in the space between them, the echo of his brother's heartbeat across the ship. But she can't mean it. She's half asleep and talking nonsense. He needs to leave.

He can't.

She groans, tired and sour and out of patience. She never makes that irritated sound at the cabin boys.

Out of the darkness her hand returns. Gentle fingers wind in his shirt and tug firmly. He follows her pull as he'll always follow her, the tide to her moon.

"I'm too tired to deal with whatever's going on in your head right now." She settles on her side, tucked between his bulk and the wall. "Go to sleep."

He hasn't slept in days. He won't now. Her bunk is narrow, meant for one and no more, but she grabs his sleeve and slings his arm over her waist and on their sides, nestled together like spoons in a drawer, the fit is...tolerable. And it feels like nothing else in the world ever has. Given permission, he surrenders this fight and presses close. She's so warm. Firm with muscle, hard and sweet. His eyes know this body so well, his nose the scent of her. This is exactly how he knew she'd feel—a warrior queen, his own Athena or Zenobia made flesh, strong and vibrant and so very alive. He closes his eyes to the darkness, buries his nose in the fall of her tangled curls.

"If you snore I'm kicking you out."

He won't. He won't sleep, so there's no fear of that. "Please snore. I'll love it."

"Shut up."

He presses close, folding his body along hers. He's willing to contort in any position to stay, no matter how painful, but to his surprise his ribs and sternum mold easily to the graceful curve of her spine, his body melting, conforming to hers like water conforms to its container. She fumbles in the darkness, finds his hand pressed against the muscle of her belly. Her palm covers the back of his hand, long fingers intertwine with his. She stifles a last cough, a tightening of her belly under his palm, before succumbing quietly to sleep.

* * *

The sultan will not back down.

Had Maeve handled him differently he may have capitulated. Been willing to compromise. As it stands, sullen and angry, pushed to his limit by a war and its aftermath, he has no patience left for her high-handed refusals. He will not budge, will not bury the children as they are or return them to the sea and have done with it. Sinbad is too tired to argue.

Maeve and Rongar left on the morning tide. She was asleep when he gathered the willpower to leave her cabin, pulling his body from the shelter of hers and rising—at least, he thinks she was asleep. He spent the waning night awake, as he knew he would. Awash in the smell of female skin, the heat of her sleeping body held close to his heart. She said nothing to him when they parted except a brief request to be careful. She looked at him the same way she always has.

Didn't she?

Without Maeve the horses will not work. No shout or muscle or whip will move them. They huddle tight as a herd in a storm, lower their heads to the ground and stand like statues to some fallen and forgotten hero. Their forms as they brace against the ash, the smoke, are weary. Broken. Unmoving. They are not intelligent creatures and they do not comprehend this task, but they understand enough: Maeve is gone. Without her, the herd's answer is clear. They have been trained from birth to serve man, obey man, but in this task they have found their collective breaking point. Without Maeve, they will not even try.

"Where is your witch?" Omar demands, out of patience and out of tact, not that Sinbad has ever known him to have much of either. "What did you do with her?"

"Call her that again and I won't bring her back." The tide shifts, rising slowly. It's restless without her, too. It got a taste and it wants her back. The fires roar, pyres flaming bright, but the children smolder, smoky and sullen. Like a final temper tantrum made manifest, they refuse to go quietly.

"I will slaughter every beast here in front of her if she doesn't do her duty!"

Sinbad breathes deep, wills the tide to drown his anger. Smoke and ash. He coughs, spits black phlegm. "What will that accomplish? What will it prove? That you can make a girl cry? Congratulations. Most men can." The tide laps his calves, swirling with foam. It rises higher. "Will you haul your firewood yourself, then? Chain your shoulders to a wagon instead of your beasts?"

"Do not provoke me, captain. I'm very fond of you. But this is my colony. You do not rule here."

"Spare me that fate." He doesn't want to. He wants no part in politics, no part in this tired spot of land, scabbed and barren, burnt and weary. Do fields sown with so much ash even bear? He stares into the hot wind, the sting of smoke as the flames rise high, shimmers of heat rolling along the ground, polishing the air until it shines like water. What was the point of it all? The invaders didn't win, but did Omar either, really? Are the few living colonists any better blessed than the dead they mourn?

"Where did you hide her away?" Omar presses. "Bring her back. The task is not complete."

"No." Maeve does not bend and neither does the Savage Sultan. He holds the memory of her soft scent in his mind, the perfect heat of her sleeping skin. Sending her away was torture, but she couldn't stay. "You rule Basra. Bring a sorcerer of your own, if you will. You have a city's worth at your disposal. You can't have mine."

"The best will not war and the worst are of no use to me." Omar coughs, spits black on the black ground.

"Is that why you want her? In hopes that an apprentice will foolishly do what you know a master would refuse?" Sinbad shakes his head slowly. "I won't allow her to be used like that. She may be an apprentice but she's not your pawn."

"Don't put words in my mouth, captain! I have always treated you and yours exceptionally well."

This is not true. Sinbad wonders if Omar even remembers.

"I ask for so little. I didn't even request your help when that cyclops mess happened—you volunteered. Now I need your woman to calm the horses and stoke the pyres, yet you refuse."

"I do. She's gone to resupply my men. When she returns you can ask her again. But if you want her compliance, I'd suggest dropping the threats. She doesn't respond well to bullying."

* * *

He spends the night delirious with pain. They're dead; he knows they're dead. Everything in him, every internal guide that lights his way knows it. His silent brother. The woman who is emphatically not his sister. He sent them away and now they're dead. The sea took them, as it takes everyone dear to him. As so often, it's his fault. He obeyed Omar. He plucked the children from the sea. This is the reaping of what he sowed, the consequence of his choice. Two living souls in payment for his harvesting of the dead.

He paces dry ground—truly paces this time, disturbing ash with each footstep, a dusty trail following him from the harbor to the campsite where his remaining men have taken refuge. Firouz's breath rattles and whistles high in his nose. Doubar snores, damply complacent. They huddle for comfort in blankets too hot for the climate, dark shadows against the orange-brown night. No one wants a campfire. No one wants horsemeat. They drink well water flavored with smoke and death, wish for strong wine. At least, Doubar does. Even that won't make Sinbad sleep. Not now. Half his crew is dead, and it's his fault. He killed the only light in this darkness by attempting to save her, and he killed Rongar for no reason at all, killed him because he could not bear to let Doubar leave his side. He might as well have slit the man's throat himself.

He's lost the Nomad, too, but this barely registers. It's just as well; he can't lead. He's proven that too many times. No one in the world should trust him anymore.

But what else could he do? What else could he possibly do? He searches his mind, wracks his brain for a solution that does not end in tragedy, and finds none. He saw the blood on her lip, heard the danger in Omar's threats. She couldn't stay.

The tide rises. He removed all the children from the harbor days ago but still they drift, endlessly drift, before his eyes. They roll like the morbid shades of dolphins, exposing their backs, their bellies. Salt-stiff, missing limbs, missing eyes. Seaweed tangles his legs, grips him like hands tugging, beseeching, the children's missing arms pulling him down. The orders were Omar's but the sin is his: he took those children back from the sea, took what was not his to take.

The undertow tugs dangerously as the tide rises, frothing his legs. The sand beneath his feet melts away without her heartbeat, the flickers of wings in her eyes.

Wings. Should he try to find her hawk, when Omar finally releases him? A penance for costing the creature its mistress? Or would it be happier wherever she sent it, lost to humankind, eventually going feral, never knowing the truth of what happened?

What hurts more? Salted wounds? Or permanent ulceration—a hole that will never heal?

* * *

"She wasn't wrong, you know."

A second night looms. He sits with his remaining brothers, three forms huddled against the encroaching darkness, the enveloping smoke of the pyres. How long should he wait before telling them? Rongar and Maeve are lost. The Nomad isn't coming back. He opens his mouth but the words won't come. His dry throat aches.

"About the magic?" Firouz coughs. "Why would she be wrong about that?"

"Not that." Doubar shakes his blanket. Ash flies like dust from a beaten rug. "About the kids." He stares at the ground, eyes bloodshot and dull.

Maeve is not a sailor at heart. _Was_ not, he corrects, with a wrench that shatters what's left of his heart. She stumbled into this life when she lost her master. Still she understood better than Omar. The past tense feels like grinding glass into his soft, shattered parts, tiny daggers grating into the wet, soft beating of his heart. Does a heart bleed when it breaks? Swell and darken like a broken leg? Or can it break silently, no outward sign, keeping its incessant, weary rhythm, day after day, crack after crack, until death finally quiets its soundless keening?

"She's seen this before. Our girl." Doubar groans and drops slowly to his side.

Sinbad raises a weary head. "How do you know?"

His brother blinks. Breathes slowly. Stares into the darkness where a campfire should be. "Why don't you? You're the intuitive one."

"Doubar."

"It's the way she looks at the dead. Touches them. I don't know. I just know she's done this before."

Sinbad sits quietly under a woolen blanket he does not want, stares at the hideous wrongness of the orange-black sky. Smoke billows from the sullen glow of the pyres. He hasn't seen the color blue in...days? Weeks. At least. Except the perfect lace of her veins. The memory of living skin under his tongue makes him want to shed this world, maybe try again for happiness in another. Something inside him rings empty. Hollow. Not his unfed stomach. Something else. Maeve is gone. Rongar is gone. The sea took them, and what it claims it does not return.

"We've buried people," Firouz says. "Everyone in the world has buried people."

"Not like this. She has."

Firouz coughs.

How does Doubar know?

"Do fish ever fly?"

"No." Firouz coughs again. "Some species have adaptations that allow them to glide in the air for short bursts. But true flight? No. Best leave that to the bats and birds."

So. His dream was wrong. Fish can't learn to fly, and neither can children.

"Those boys are as angry at you for sending Maeve away as Omar is." Doubar throws his blanket over his head. "Calf-eyed sprouts," he grunts beneath it. "The way they sigh after her is beyond annoying. I'm surprised she hasn't lost her patience yet."

"They can't help it. In the animal kingdom the scent of a female spurs males to do any number of unlikely things. There's no reason to assume the same isn't true for humans."

"Hogwash. No pretty girl has ever made me lose my head that badly," Doubar says, which isn't true. "And Maeve stinks as much as the rest of us. She'd say so herself if she were here."

She does not. Sweat smells, blood and horse and smoke and leather, yes. But Maeve, the core of her, does not. Did not. He rested two nights ago, nose buried in the graceful curve of her throat, hungry for the peace of that secret skin. She's rich earth after rain, new grass and sunshine through broad green leaves. He struggles against his brother's thoughtless words, almost opens his mouth to argue. But she's gone. She's gone and she isn't coming back, so it doesn't matter. Not anymore. Doubar is tired. They're all tired. He refuses to fight with his brother over something that ultimately doesn't matter. He'll hold the scent of her in his memory forever, the way life flashed in her dark eyes, quick as the beat of tiny wings. But his brother doesn't need to know.

Winged horses hide in the sky. They charge the stars, dare the clouds to give chase. Silver wings, silver bellies, they glide on blue moonlight. The fish Maeve freed gives them pause; they have never seen such a thing before. But then the smoke comes. It hinders their flight, the surge of their powerful wings. Their nostrils drip with blood and, one by one, they drop like falling stars. The heavens sit silent.

Omar opens the belly of a fallen beast with his dagger. Diamonds spill from dead eyes. He offers the steaming flesh. To refuse hospitality is a grievous sin, but Maeve's ghost will never forgive him if he eats.

"You wear a token of my esteem." A warning.

The chain of that token pulls tight around his throat, squeezing, cutting into soft flesh. His lungs burn. He smells blood—his own, the dead horse's. He can't breathe. Can't _breathe_.

"Sinbad!" Rough hands shake him like a rug.

He jerks awake, wrenches his body away from the bulk hovering over him. Orange smoke masks the sky. No horses. No stars. Just Doubar. His brother shakes him again. Usually he can tear himself out of that grasp, but not today. He hangs, limp and useless as a windless sail.

"You yelled. Thrashed like a mad dog had hold of you."

Did he? He doesn't remember yelling, doesn't remember any sound but Omar's voice, Omar's threat. His hand grabs reflexively for his throat, finds unbroken skin speckled with hairs. No blood. Omar's amulet swings free against his chest, heavy as lead. He can breathe. He inhales deeply—and coughs.

"Just a dream." Firouz's head emerges from his blanket. "Go back to sleep."

Doubar does, too tired to protest. Sinbad does not, too tired to obey. He didn't cry out when he slept in her cabin. Did he? He remembers with painful clarity the sweetness of her fingers in his hair, real or dreamed or somewhere in between. The tickling warmth of her sleeping breath on his skin. Who was asleep? Who awake? Then the coming together of their bodies, hard muscle under soft skin, sleepy heat and the way she smelled like a woman, letting him hold her for a few quiet hours, just a handful of moments before he sent her to her death.

Does it matter anymore if he screamed? He sent her away. Now he's alone. He digs his hand in the rocky dirt, palms a handful of bitter ash. When she moves, he moves. Where she goes, he goes. The moon and the tide, the light and the sea, except he realized too late. This feeling, it's intolerable. The dream is over. Omar's token no longer chokes him, but still he can't breathe.

Doubar's thundering snores reemerge, Firouz's high, whining breaths. If they soothe the ache at all, it's too little to tell. They fix nothing. Maeve is gone. Rongar is gone.

He yearns for the scent of magic, turns to find it as he always has, seeking the reassurance he's known since he was small, but even as he craves its sweetness it repulses him. Dim-Dim. Maeve. The smell of magic thick with memory, with loss. Female skin. Female sweat. Female sleep. The darkness of her cabin, soft and secret, adrift in the lingering pain of memory.

He asked Dim-Dim once why magic had a scent. The old man lifted his head swiftly from his writing and beckoned him near.

"Say it again, son. Slowly this time. Tell me what you mean."

"It tickles like pepper. It's heavy, like the sky before a storm. Sharp like metal, but sweet, too. Why?"

More than half his life separates him from this memory, and more than half his life he's pondered the look in the old man's eyes at that moment. Still he can't describe it. Dim-Dim was not happy, he knows this much.

"Am I in trouble?"

"No. Never for asking questions. Not of me. The talent for magic comes at a price, Sinbad. I...am not surprised you've been judged to have paid it. Not with all you've lost. But I hesitate. Son, I don't think this is what you want."

It wasn't. It _isn't_. But that smell is his home.

An empty home now, memories of ghosts that will not return. Dim-Dim is lost, and Maeve is dead.

Was he wrong to choose the sea over this gift? Dim-Dim thought not, but Dim-Dim is gone. And he never knew, because Sinbad could never explain, that first fight with the sea. How it tried to take him, beginning this reckoning that will only grow greater with time.

The undertow tries to take him. He scrapes the side of his ship as his footing falls away, the scent of her skin fading on the tide. She's gone. Barnacles slice his skin, dig and tear, peel him back layer by layer like an onion. Salt and blood as the tide rises, the Nomad tall and creaking above him. Except didn't his ship go down?

The waves pull, the water far too deep now for him to fight, too strong for him to swim against. His back scrapes the hull, cleaving flesh from bone, and he bows his head to the tide, to the inevitability of this moment. He took. The sea takes. Where is the unfairness in that?

There's no Rongar this time, waiting in a boat with outstretched hands. No Maeve spilling diamonds in the sea. He sent them away. He let the sea take, as it always takes. He's on his own, and it's his fault.

* * *

Voices. Has he washed up somewhere? He's so tired. He wants to rest, but they won't stop talking. Probably they're not even real. Most of the things that happen to him lately aren't real, and he can never tell until he opens his eyes to the unending orange-black smoke.

"What the…"

"Hush." She sounds tired, too. Beyond. Maybe as spent as he feels. "Don't."

"But—"

"Doubar, don't."

"But—"

"I mean it. Leave him be."

Yes, leave him be. Let him rest. His back shudders, a single raw, open wound, flayed bare and exposed to the smoking sky. His chest, for whatever reason, feels miraculously unharmed. He can even feel his heartbeat, slow and even as if in peaceful sleep.

"Did he touch you? I mean _touch you_? I'll pummel him if he did."

"No, and it's none of your business. He's fine where he is. He wasn't even awake when he moved."

Is he even awake now? He doubts it. That fierce, tired voice is the most beautiful thing he's ever heard. That's how he knows it's not real.

"Sleepwalking?" A heavy breath. A cough. "We have to get him out of here."

"I know." Oh, that voice. She's not really here. She can't be. Consciousness trickles in, vehemently unwelcome. There's a jagged hole where she belongs, a cavity ripped through him like the barnacles ripped him, laying him bare. But in this space between sleep and waking he can still smell her skin. His chest lies contoured along the curve of her spine, blissfully painless, a bitterly cruel dream. He prefers the barnacles.

"He won't leave Omar. Not till the job's done." Doubar coughs again.

"I'll think of something."

He surrenders once more to unconsciousness.

**Author's Note:**

> There will be one more chapter. FWIW, observant Muslims do not practice cremation but burial at sea is acceptable.


End file.
